From Uri Avnery ( http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery02132007.html )

...most Israeli archaeologists have always been the loyal foot-soldiers of the official propaganda. Since the emergence of modern Zionism, they have been engaged in a desperate endeavor to "find" archaeological evidence for the historical truth of the stories of the Old Testament. Until now, they have gone empty-handed: there exists no archaeological proof for the exodus from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan and the kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. But in their eagerness to prove the unprovable (because in the opinion of the vast majority of archaeologists and historians outside Israel - and also some in Israel - the Old Testament stories are but sacred myths), the archaeologists have destroyed many strata of other periods.

We can only hope that the waqf treats the complaints of Israeli archeologists and Zionist racists with all the contempt they deserve.

As for the importance of the Temple in Jewish religion, Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin identifies it as the abode of the spirit of idolatry.

Here is the evolution of Christianity, Islam and Judaism after the Roman period destruction of the 2nd Temple.

First Constantinian Christianity crystallizes in the 4th century, followed in the 7th-8th century by Islam, which is an evolved form of Jamesian Christian Judaism. Only around the 10th century through the efforts or because of the efforts of Saadyah Gaon, his colleagues and his enemies do medieval Rabbinic and Karaitic Judaisms crystallize. Before that time period using the name "Jews" for the adherents of the non-Christian currents that developed out of Judean-Samarian Temple religion is incorrect. Saadyah Gaon does not use the terms Jews in this way. He uses meyahedim/muwahhiduna and calls the religion yihud/tawhid. (Those h’s are hets.) It almost sounds like Muhammad ibn Abdi-l-Wahhab.

In short modern Rabbinic and modern Karaite Judaism have far less connection to the Jerusalame Temple than either Islam or Christianity.

What utter hog wash by an open anti-Semite. Sadia Gaon was a Jewish community leader aside from being a philosopher and RABBI.

Jewish always = Yehud, just as Yehud evelved from Hebrew. A tradition UNBROKEN by anti-Semite turd burglars, who have tried again and again to brand us everything under the sun but what we are... an indigenous people of the Levant with a moral claim to our homeland.

Careful scholars distinguish between Israelite, Judahite, Judean and Jew, and the ancestors of modern ethnic Ashkenazim were only just beginning to practice various forms of Judaism when Medieval Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism first began to crystallize.

A common Palestinian origin for all groups that adhered to the Judean Samarian Temple religion was unlikely in Hasmonean times, and the Hasmoneans seem to have created or encouraged the pilgrimage festivals as a way to create a unified consciousness as an easy way to raise money once the Hasmoneans as priests managed to consolidate both religious and also political authority in their own hands.

Careful Nazis make distinctions where there arent any... like Jews being 50% human, likewise Mr. "Joachim Martillo".

Fact is no relevant history of Ashkenazim contradict the STANDARD model mentioned above. What History doesn't mention , and modern genetic testing does (for one voiding that idiotic Kazar hypothesis) is show distinct and un arguable line of decent. Bringing in the Karaites is further strawman hogwash since they are repatriated in great numbers (majority) into the Israeli polity, just like all Mizrachim. And the Samaritan Temple cult continues today. I wish the Samaritans had the capability to reverse the ethnic cleansing of Samaria, to reverse more of a thousand years of dhimitude and humiliation at the hands of the Arab occupiers.